A Proper Goodbye
by BayPearl
Summary: Upon learning that his little brother has died, Dick Grayson has to learn to deal with his grief.


"Master Richard? Di-"

Nightwing didn't hear anymore as the phone slipped out of his grip and fell to the floor of Titan's Tower. He stared blankly at the screen in front of him, not processing any information the daily news was throwing at him, only hearing Alfred's words ringing through his head over and over again.

Jason. He's… Dead?

Nightwing shook his head. That couldn't be right. He just saw Jason the other day with Bruce. He went to visit them in Gotham. Sure the new Boy Wonder seemed to be a bit more out of it than usual but not enough to make such a horrible decision as to go after the Joker himself.

This had to be one of Jay-bird's weird pranks. That's it. A prank. Jason convinced Alfred to call Dick on the secure Titan's emergency telephone. Maybe Alfred did sound genuinely distraught but it could easily have been a trick. Distortion from the phone lines could have been the cause.

"Nightwing? Is everything okay?"

Dick turned to see Raven easing herself into the room, looking at him with a concerned expression.

"Oh hey Rae. Yeah I'm fine." Dick laughed lightly "Just one of Jason's stupid pranks."

Raven looked at him as if she didn't believe him.

"You're crying."

Dick reached up and touched his face. She was right, there was a stream of tears dripping down his face.

Just then, Raven looked to the screen still broadcasting the news behind him, and her eyes widened ever so slightly and her mouth dropped open in shock. In the years he had been working with the Titans, he knew if she showed this much emotion something terrible had happened.

Fearing for his city, Nightwing whipped around the see what warranted that reaction from the empath.

He fell to his knees as he read the words "Jason Todd, Adopted son of Bruce Wayne, Killed in Bombing in Sarajevo" scroll across the screen.

He felt Raven set a hand on his shoulder. She didn't say anything but the comfort of her presence was enough.

As the shock of the realization that this wasn't a prank started to wear off, Dick felt the anger rise in his heart. Alfred was the one to call and tell him the news. Alfred. Not Bruce. His adopted father didn't even have the decency to tell him that his brother had just died. He had to be told by their butler at the same time that the news networks were informed.

Nightwing has had his differences with Batman, hell that was the reason he adopted the mantle of Nightwing and separated himself from the Dark Knight. But could the older man really be so cold as to let his first son deal with the loss of his brother on his own?

A squeeze on his shoulder reminded Dick that he wasn't actually alone. Currently he had Raven supporting him and the rest of the Titans were his family as well. He felt himself deflate, all the energy he had sparking the anger vanished and he dropped from his knees to sit dejectedly on the floor.

Dick raised his hand and covered Raven's on his shoulder. "Can you tell the rest of the team that I'll need to take some time for myself? I should be able to lead the team again in a few days."

Raven hesitated before nodding and starting to leave. At the door, she turned, "Will you want any company?"

"Not right now Raven. I'll let you guys know when I'm ready to talk." He didn't turn to her, just sat on the floor still fixated on the screen displaying video of Bruce Wayne transporting a casket with his youngest son-Nightwing's brother-inside.

He heard the other Titan shut the door as she left and only then did he curl in into himself and start sobbing.

The kid didn't deserve this. Dick and Jason may not have gotten along really well, but they were still brothers. Brothers fight sometimes. It happens. That didn't mean that Dick wanted Jason gone like this.

Why wasn't Jason more careful? He was reckless and had no care for his own safety. Dick had given him tips when he took up the mantle of Robin. How to avoid the worst of the villains but Jason ignored all of this.

If either of them should have died it should have been Dick. He was the first, the trial run. Batman didn't know how to protect him at the beginning, often forgetting he had a small sidekick to watch out for as well as himself. Dick had plenty of scars from this time. So how did he manage to live through such horror and inexperience when Jason had years of experience in the Robin suit.

One slip up. One minor mistake was all it took for the boy to lose his life to the mad clown.

The Joker.

With new determination, Dick rose to the computer in front of him to look for the Joker's location. He hoped that Bruce finally took it upon himself to rid the world of that mad man, but knew realistically that not even this would cause the great Batman to turn his back on his moral code. The computer managed to track down Joker's location, showing him in the medical wing of Arkham Asylum. Dick sank into the desk chair in front of the monitors. If nothing else, at least the bastard was suffering.

With nothing else to do, Dick couldn't help but remember his last interaction with the second Robin. They had gotten into another argument about how reckless Jason could be on missions. The last thing Dick said to the boy was how he didn't deserve the name Robin. It was meant as a tribute to the Flying Grayson's and Jason was ruining the image with how he didn't care about how badly he injured the people he was fighting.

How was Dick going to go on knowing that the last thing Jason thought was that he wasn't worth what he had been fighting for for years. How could he have said that to a teenage boy?

Dick lowered his head to his hands and sat in his own silent requiem for his little brother.

Dick Grayson stood next to Bruce Wayne in the cemetery watching the casket get lowered into the hole in the ground. Most of the crowd gathered around were employees from Wayne Enterprises, though each of the Titans were there mourning as well. Clark Kent and Diana Prince stood next to Bruce as his emotional support. Dick had himself distanced from all the support available to him. He didn't think he deserved it with how he had treated his brother in life.

During the visitation beforehand the Titans all surrounded their leader in a wall of comfort as he watched person after person go up to talk about Jason Peter Todd, the second son of Bruce Wayne. The casket was closed, which made sense since the official story was that Jason had been killed in a bombing. Which wasn't entirely inaccurate. The resulting damage to the body would require the casket be closed.

Dick knew that there was no body in that casket though. Bruce thought it would be best for Jason's body to actually kept in a confidential location as the Wayne family had too many enemies who could use the boy's body or gravesite to their advantage, or whatever reason the Bat had for doing this. However, Dick was still uncomfortable with the thought that his brother would be in an unmarked grave for eternity.

Now he stood by a hole in the ground that had an empty coffin in it as dirt was poured down onto the place where Jason should be.

He couldn't even say a proper goodbye.


End file.
